From Protest To Revolution
Dan Hind gets to the point at hand here, and calls us all out to act and live more democratically. This means not simply waiting around for leaders to provide for our freedoms and civic well being, but to take responsibility into our own hands for the state of our society and its future sustenance.
The decision of the Egyptian people to take responsibility for their future - their decision to become citizens - enlivens, even delights. This is a movement that isn’t being orchestrated by leaders in the way we have been led to expect. People are acting as though they are free and so becoming free.
The Egyptians, like the Tunisians - like people all over the world - want a share in the vast wealth that their rulers and a handful of insiders have hoarded for themselves. They want dignity and a life they can call their own.
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They have changed their opinion of what is possible and right. Every day of freedom they enjoy is a message to the rest of us; things do not have to be as they are.
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We have long been entranced by the idea that shopping and voting once every four years for one wing or other of the pro-business party would be enough to give us the good life. Vast public relations campaigns fostered the sense that a better future could be had, if only we chose wisely from the list of approved candidates. All the while the rich have taken more and left the rest of us to struggle with insecurity, anxiety and mounting debts. The people in Cairo didn’t look to charismatic politicians or party machines to do the work for them.
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The Tea Party in the United States and Conservatives in Britain promise change while working to ensure that everything that matters stays the same. The right in both countries has benefited from the failure of their centrist opponents to address the fundamental causes of recession, unemployment and social breakdown. It is as though the entire political establishment has adopted the stultifying uniformity of a one-party state. There is a bankruptcy of policy and of principle that will, perhaps, finally compel us to take matters into our own hands.
In the presidential campaign of 2008, Barack Obama never tired of telling voters they were the change they had been looking for. The people of Tunisia and Egypt have turned a clever slogan into an undeniable fact. They did not wait for permission to take action. If we want another world we must all learn from them.
